We’re First Central Insurance & Technology Group (First Central for short), an innovative, market-leading insurance company. We protect the things customers love so they can get on with what matters to them in life.
Data drives us. It fuels our outstanding distribution, finance, technology and legal services. Our underwriting skills are built on data expertise; it creates the insights we need to give the right cover to the right customers at the right price. But, it’s the people inside and outside our business that power us. They make us stand out, help us succeed. We’re ambitious. We’re growing. We’ve won awards.
Fancy making a difference in a company that’s changing insurance for good? Engaging and collaborative? Forward thinking and meticulous? Passionate about Agile?
Sound like you! we're currently recruiting for a Senior Agile Delivery Lead to join our Technology and Data teams based in Haywards Heath, West Sussex or Salford Quays, Manchester. Working flexibly, you'll spend most of your time working from home, with a day a week in the office (so living within a commutable distance to Haywards Heath or Salford Quays would be perfect). But of course, it’s your choice - if you prefer to be in the office more - that's good with us too.
As the Senior Agile Delivery Lead (SADL for short) you’ll be highly focused on the delivery of high-quality outcomes, setting the pace and driving teams to be efficient and effective in solution delivery. You’ll be responsible for driving team delivery and will be accountable for team performance, as well as project delivery momentum by optimising the flow of work within teams. If you enjoy addressing and owning the resolution of complicated risks, issues, and dependencies to ensure smooth, timely deliveries, and love managing stakeholder expectations, this roles for you.
The SADL brings energy and enthusiasm to create the right environment by removing blockers, and building an environment of trust, self-organisation and ensuring the health and happiness of the teams. Continual Improvement is at the heart of the SADL role and is seen as the champion of continuous improvement activities, always seeking to reduce waste and increase productivity. You’ll thrive on providing coaching and mentoring to others and will consult and support the wider areas of Tech and Data, leading on key initiatives to support FCG in their Agile Journey, and will be a key driver in the adoption of new ways of working, experiments, and innovative improvements.
We’d love to have you on the team if:
- You have extensive experience of leading delivery teams using Agile values, principles, methods, and practices.
- You enjoy training, coaching, and mentoring technical and non-technical teams on the mindset and behaviours of what it means to ‘be Agile’.
- You possess solid experience working with Agile techniques such as User Story Mapping, Splitting User stories, Creation and maintenance of backlogs, Continuous Integration, Pair Programming, TDD, Automated Testing etc.
- You have a vast experience working with scaled agility, specifically SAFe.
- You enjoy leading teams, have bags of energy, and loads of enthusiasm.
Powering the business with the right tools.
What’s involved:
- Take primary responsibility for the timely delivery of features and product backlog items, driving the product team to achieve committed outcomes and being accountable for the team’s performance.
- Take accountability for managing the product team dependencies and being responsible for working with RTEs to manage dependencies across Release’s.
- Interface effectively across all parts of the change delivery process to ensure effective communication, planning and timely delivery of releases.
- Ensure robust, effective delivery plans are in place by executing a continuous approach to planning, forecasting, estimating, managing uncertainty and contingency planning.
- Optimise the flow of work through your own product teams and as part of the overall change delivery process, by clearing blockers, impediments, and resolving any conflict situations.
- Take responsibility for ensuring the product team always have a healthy backlog with an adequate amount of prior prepared items to work on.
- Take responsibility and accountability for regular reporting and measurement of product team performance, identify opportunities for continual improvement, learning from other product teams across the business.
- Create a culture within your product team of psychological safety, creativity, innovation and high performance, which builds trust and credibility with stakeholders, and has problem solving at its core.
- Lead the implementation and operation of Agile practices into your product team(s), including facilitating all events (Planning, Daily Scrum, Review, Retro), and support ‘Scaled Agility’ events such; Program Backlog Refinement, PI Planning, Scrum of Scrums, PO Sync, Inspect and Adapt.
- Coach the team and the organisation to work more effectively within an Agile framework and drive increased collaboration across Technology and Data.
Experience & Knowledge
- Extensive experience leading delivery teams using Agile values, principles, methods and practices.
- Extensive experience with Agile techniques such as User Story Mapping, Splitting User stories, Backlog maintenance, Continuous Integration, Pair Programming, TDD, Automated Testing etc.
- Extensive experience in leading teams with different Agile frameworks, such as Scrum, Kanban & XP.
- Extensive experience working with New and Existing Scrum teams and understanding the difference in approaches required.
- Experience with Scaled Agile and the associated frameworks such as SAFe and LeSS.
- Experience working with Feature and Component based teams within the SDLC.
- Experience with planning and delivery tools such as Burn-ups, TAKT Time and Monte Carlo Theory.
- Experience in Coaching, Mentoring and Teaching others in the practical application of Agile practices and frameworks.
- Experience in Structured Problem Solving (SPS) Techniques to address root cause issues and driving improvement initiatives from them.
- Solid experience in the use of Agile tools, such as Azure DevOps, Confluence, Miro etc.
- Knowledge of a structured yet agile approach to development.
Skills and Qualifications
- Advanced Certification in Scrum – A-CSM / PSM2 or similar.
- Outstanding communication skills both verbal and written.
- Outstanding Facilitation skills both virtually and ‘in-person’.
- Excellent time management and organisational skills.
- Excellent skills and knowledge of situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual. improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency.
Behaviours
- Willing to take accountability for delivery.
- Passionate about delivering with agility.
- Focused and results driven with an emphasis on attention to delivery, detail and accuracy.
- Displays a growth mindset.
- Self-motivated and highly energetic – infects others with enthusiasm.
- A flexible pro-active approach and positive attitude.
- Willing to own, run and drive through improvements.
- Ability to work on own initiative and as part of a team.
- Passionate about mentoring, coaching, and getting the best out of people.
This is just the start. Imagine where you could end up! The journey’s yours…
What can we do for you?
People first. Always. We’re passionate about our colleagues and know the best people deserve an extraordinary working environment. We owe it to them so that’s what we offer. Our workplaces are energetic, inspirational, supportive. To get a taste of the advantages you’ll enjoy, take a look at all our perks in full here.
Intrigued? Our Talent team can tell you everything you need to know about what we want and what we’re offering, so feel free to get in touch.
